Turkey Practice 2: Hamilton 1st, Alonso 6th

By Sam Cooper
August 25 2007

The Vodafone McLaren Mercedes formula one team have completed the second practice session for this weekends Turkish grand prix, with 22 year old Lewis Hamilton topping the timesheets by 0.3 seconds, with his team mate Fernando Alonso finishing the session in 6th position, half a second behind his less experienced team mate.

The session started a warm 53°C track temperature, with the air temperature a much more pleasant 35° C. Within a few minutes of the session starting, the cars got going, but the running time was cut short, by a loose drain cover at turn 10. The session was stopped at 14.22 local time for 28 minutes, the session restarted at 14:50 local time.

From that moment on, it became a race, with almost every driver going out within half a minute of the session becoming green flagged.

Britain’s Lewis Hamilton set the fastest lap of the session in the last half hour of the session, no one in the field including Lewis could beat Lewis pace setting time. Kimi Räikkönen finished the session a confident second, with the revitalized Toyota’s of Ralf Schumacher and Jarno Trulli finishing 3rd and 4th respectively.

Hamilton’s team mate Fernando Alonso looked competitive at the start of the 90 minute session, but was unable to finish any higher than 6th position as the session closed, behind 5th placed Felipe Massa.

Behind Fernando was Nico Rosberg and Hekki Kovalinen, who were separated by no less than 0.03 seconds.

Times from the second session will be shown below.